150 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition Furthermore, the only equipment to be procured would be inexpensive ordinary PCs which could later (after the elections) be donated to the Department of Education for use in the public schools system. For some reason, though, the Comelec leadership refused in 2009 to consider this system. Comelec still obstinately refuses to consider that system today. Curiously, none of the candidates that aspired for national or local political ofce in 2010 – some, as usual, after claiming that they were urged to run by God Himself – wanted to speak out about how the Comelec's poll automation efforts were proceeding inexorably toward potentially disastrous and possibly predetermined conclusions. Two explanations suggested themselves: one, they did not understand how the system could be compromised; and, two, they hoped to be among those who would benet if the system could be compromised. For the 2013 computerized polls, all the aforementioned problems and deciencies in the automated election system implemented by Comelec remained unaddressed and uncorrected. There was still no software source code made available for proper review, the CF cards used were still rewritable, and the function allowing the use by the mandated election ofcials of private digital keys continued to be disabled. Comelec – by this time headed by election lawyer Sixto Brillantes Jr., a self-confessed IT illiterate – stubbornly refused to consider the proposed remedies suggested by IT professionals and continued to insist on the critically defective system provided by Comelec's beloved Smartmatic. Indeed, against the strongly-voiced objections of IT experts (including the technical experts in Comelec's own Advisory Board) and knowledgeable observers, the Comelec board chaired by Brillantes forced through the exercise of an option to purchase the 82,000 awed Smartmatic voting machines which had previously only been leased for the 2010 exercise. This effectively tied the country to Smartmatic's faulty automated election system for years to come. The 2010 automated polls To illustrate how pervasive electronic cheating infected the automated 2010 polls, not even the very small town of Compostela, just north of Cebu City, was spared from the curse of computerized “magic”. What happened there also clearly illustrated the attitude of Comelec toward elections being stolen through electronic means. In the Compostela case, the PCOS voting and counting machines gave mayoralty candidate Joel Quiño the win over candidate Ritchie Wagas. The people of the town, feeling incredulous at the result, demanded that Comelec open the ballot boxes and manually recount the votes in the presence of everyone right there in the town plaza. Comelec sat on the case for 22 months – effectively ignoring a peoples' clamor for a transparent election – until a recount was ordered by Judge Estela Singco of the Regional Trial Court branch in the